


A lifetime

by raqueeel



Category: Pynch - Fandom, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 05:51:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7922998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raqueeel/pseuds/raqueeel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam meets Ronan when they are 4. <br/>A glimpse into their lives as they grow up as best friends (and something more).</p>
            </blockquote>





	A lifetime

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first fic and therefore I've never written anything Pynch related, so be good. Plus, english isn't my native language: I apologize for the mistakes and typos you might find. 
> 
> Well, enjoy! 
> 
> P.S. Comments are appreciated.

 

At the age of four, what Adam looks forward to the most during the week is for Saturday to come by just so he can spend the evening in the park and play with the other kids. At first, his dad refuses to allow his mom to take Adam to the park, loudly claiming that that’s a waste of time but eventually deciding that he’d rather have Adam out of his sight during a couple of hours instead of having to deal with his son. 

Adam, as young as he is, soon realizes that his dad is not as the other kids’ dads, who don’t shout at their children when they fall down while playing, and buy them ice-cream and toys to play with, and make their children laugh. Adam mostly just wonders why the other kids don’t seem to have bruises all over their bodies like he does.

At the park, as Adam approaches the swings, he sees two boys nearby fighting over a toy car. Suddenly, the taller one pushes the smaller boy to the ground and runs away from him. The boy, while still in the ground, starts looking really, really angry for a kid that young –any of the other kids Adam knows would have started crying, but the boy with the dark hair just clenches his fists and stands up slowly.

Adam feels kind of bad for him because that toy car looked really cool and now the boy won’t be able to play with it, so he decides to go and talk to him and maybe ask him if he wants to play with him in the sandbox.

“Hi, I’m Adam,” he says, extending his hand, because that’s what nice people are supposed to do when they meet someone, right?

The boy eyes his hand carefully and crosses his arms in his chest, refusing to say anything and just standing there.

Adam lets his hand fall and sways on his feet, not really knowing what to say or do. Maybe, he thinks, he should just go and leave him alone, but he would really like to have a friend for once and the boy looks just as lonely as he is. 

“What’s your name?” He asks finally.

The boy sighs loudly, annoyed, and says “Ronan.”

“Well, Ronan, would you like to play with me?” Adam asks, smiling at him and trying not to look nervous. “Maybe… a race to the pound?”

At this, Ronan smiles deviously and runs towards the pound, leaving Adam behind, and as Adam starts running after him he happily realizes that he’s made his first real friend.

 

* * *

  

Since the day they met each other, Ronan and Adam spend each Saturday evening together at the park and each time Ronan takes along a different toy for him and Adam to play with. Adam doesn’t really have many toys himself, so he doesn’t have anything besides his company to offer to Ronan and hopes that’s enough for him, at least for the moment.

Even though they are quite different, things work between them somehow and one day, after they get tired of chasing each other through the park, Ronan decides to invite Adam over to his house with the pretense that his mom has made cookies for both of them because she really wants to meet Adam.

Adam accepts because of the cookies, _obviously_.

 

When Ronan announces that they have already arrived to his house Adam seriously can’t believe that Ronan –the boy who pricked another kid’s football just because he _felt like it_ \- lives in a farm with real cows and real horses and even real ponies that he says he has named after Disney princesses. 

“You’ve named your pony Cinderella?” Adam asks incredulous.

Ronan shrugs and nods nonchalantly and drags Adam towards the inside of The Barns.

“C’mon, SpongeBob is about to start and we don’t want to miss any second of it, now do we?” Ronan says, hurrying to turn the TV on. 

Adam doesn’t really like SpongeBob but he is not about to say anything when Ronan looks that excited about it, so he settles into the couch and tries looking more at the screen and less at Ronan’s face.

"So," Ronan says suddenly and Adam looks at him at notices that he is nervously biting the bracelets that his dad gave him the other day. "there's this guy at my class called Joseph, which is like a really weird name for a kid if you ask me because really, who calls his son Joseph, right? I mean, it's not like I utterly dislike the name it's just that it’s like a name for old people…"

"Ronan, get to the point for Dora the Explora's sake.” 

Ronan looks at him and Adam can see that his cheeks are red. "Well...  This Joseph guy asked me something... About him and me. And I couldn't answer him because I had to talk to you first... About you and me." Ronan says all of this very slowly and deliberately not looking at Adam.

Adam, for his part, is very busy trying to stop his tiny little heart from beating so fast because he might be six by now but he wants to _at least_ make it alive to eight so he can get to eat as many Oreo's as he can before dying, even thought there won't ever be a time when we'd had eaten enough of them.

Ronan sighs slowly and says really quickly, so fast that Adam barely catches it, “ _arewebestfriends_?"

"What?" Adam asks stunned.

"I mean, I get if you don't want to or you already have one or whatever, but I like spending time with you and playing Spiderman with you and watching SpongeBob with you, even thought I know you don't really like it but you still watch it with me,” says Ronan without taking more than a breath.

Adam smiles shyly and says "I like to do those thing with you too.”

Ronan grins at that and continues "So, you know, Joseph asked if I wanted to be his best friend and I said that I couldn't because I thought I kind of already had one and he got mad and said that that didn't even make sense so I got mad and said that his Captain America backpack was really ugly." When Ronan finishes talking he smiles triumphantly as if he had won another of their races and Adam cant help but smile back at him.

“Well, so do you want to be my best friend or not?" Ronan asks.

"I guess I have no other choice but to agree, have I?”

"No, you don't. You are stuck with me."

 

* * *

 

On the day of Adam’s eleventh birthday Ronan surprises him with a trip to the fair from a nearby town. Niall, Ronan’s dad, drives them there and tells them that he’ll be back to pick them and Declan up in three hours. 

As soon as the BMW disappears Declan goes to look for his supposed new girlfriend and leaves them to their own devices.

Ronan turns to Adam and smiles happily at him “So, what should we do first?” He asks Adam “You can pick whatever you want and you don’t have to worry about the money, because my dad knows some guy who works in here or whatever and he gave him plenty of tickets for free.” Ronan shows him a bunch of tickets as if to prove this and Adam turns around trying to decide for a ride.

“Bumper cars,” Adam tells Ronan, who immediately smiles hugely and happily. Adam knows that’s Ronan’s favorite ride and if he smiles at Adam like that then he’ll do bumper cars twenty times if necessary without hesitating.

Once there, they follow each other and forget everyone else, trying to bump the other as much as they can and grinning madly whenever one of them succeeds. They laugh, together and at each other, they laugh because they can and because they are happy, they laugh and laugh some more, not caring about what other people think about them as long as there is a _them._

 

After two hours of rides and with fourteen tickets less, they decide to take a break. Ronan buys cotton candy and they sit in a bench while they eat it. They are comfortably silent for a while until Adam mumbles a quiet “Thank you.”

Ronan looks at him and asks “What for?”

“For this, for everything, for being my friend…”

Now Ronan _really_ looks at him with his eyes narrowed, as if studying Adam, but doesn’t say anything, just takes Adam’s arm and makes him follow him.

“C’mon, let’s go to the Ferris wheel.”

 

When they get to the top of the Ferris wheel Adam notices Ronan looking strangely nervous and squirmy, so he places his hand in Ronan’s shoulder reassuringly but it only seems to make him even more anxious so he places it back in his lap again.

“I didn’t know you were scared of heights,” Adam says, looking at Ronan.

_“_ I’m not.”

“Could have fooled me…”

Ronan sighs and takes a big breath and then turns to look at Adam; for some reason Adam can’t comprehend, his heart starts beating incredibly fast under Ronan’s stare and he can only hope that Ronan doesn't hear it.

“I love…” Ronan says quietly, making Adam’s heart go even more fast than before, “I love… mmh… You know, spending time with you. Yeah, I love spending time with you. I just thought you should know.”

Adam doesn’t know what’s got into Ronan so the mechanics of his brain quickly start functioning, making an uncomfortable silence prolong between them. Ronan turns to look through the window, embarrassed, and Adam feels awful because he knows that he’s somehow hurt his feelings. Adam just needs to be honest, with himself and with Ronan.

“Me, too. I love that, too,” he admits quietly, even though it seems that they are both talking about something different than their friendship.

 

* * *

  

Adam is twelve when he kisses a girl for the first time; her name is Anna and Adam has been thinking that she’s really cute and nice since he first saw her in his history class. 

The kiss turns out rather sloppy because both of them are nervous and inexperienced but they laugh about it and talk about meeting again in a couple of days. Suddenly, Adam finds himself being Anna’s boyfriend and the first person he tells is Ronan.

Ronan, as it turns out, doesn’t seem as happy for Adam as he had first expected.

“Whatever.” Is all he says when Adam tells him the news.

Adam furrows his brow and looks at Ronan, “Why are you suddenly pissed off?”

“I’m not. I said whatever, what do you want me to say?” For some reason Adam can’t comprehend Ronan looks annoyed. He rolls his eyes at him.

“She’s nice, you would like her.”

Ronan doesn’t say anything and they don’t ever have a chance to talk about it again because just two weeks later Adam breaks up with Anna and Ronan never gets to meet her and Adam has the impression that doesn’t bother Ronan at all.

Either way, after Anna there are several other girls that come and go from Adam’s life but for some reason he can’t help but compare them to Ronan.

 

* * *

 

 If there’s something Adam and Ronan are good at that’s fighting. They have such strong personalities that they can’t help but clash and burn from time to time. The thing is, Adam realizes, that their arguments have been getting worse this past months and he is scared that when they less expect it they both will say something really out of line and make everything around them explode.

Adam thinks it all started when Ronan and his family went camping together  for a couple of weeks after Ronan turned thirteen. When they came back and Adam saw Ronan again he was acting really weird and started treating Adam in a distant sort of way that made him think that their friendship had just taken an step behind. It took to a point that he didn’t even talk to Ronan for an entire week because he wasn’t answering his calls or messages and Adam was angry and annoyed and so he decided to pay a visit to his best friend to let him know that he was being a complete asshole.

“What are you doing here?” Asks Ronan irritated when he opens the door and sees Adam standing in the porch of his house. 

Adam ignores him and instead says “What is wrong with you? You have been ignoring me for days. If you were a girl I’d think you have your period or something because you are behaving all sensitive and shit but I know for a fact that you don’t have the necessary biological parts to have any kind of bleeding in your downstair parts…”

“Jesus, okay, shut up, would you?” Ronan cuts him “You are making me uncomfortable with all that weird period talk. Come in, for Christ's sake.”

Adam follows Ronan to the living room and sits on the couch; Ronan watches him for a couple of seconds and then sits on the other end of it. Adam raises his eyebrows but says nothing.

“Did I do something wrong?” Adam asks “If I did, then I’m sorry, but Ronan you have to talk to me, I can’t read your mind. Trust me, if I could I’d do it because it’s really hard to know what you are thinking half of the time.”

Ronan refuses to look at him but at least he sighs and answers Adam “You didn’t do anything wrong, it’s all me, you know how I am. I just… I needed some space. To think… about… some stuff I realized… during my time away at the camp.”

“To think about what? If you have problems you can tell me and I could try to help you.”

“You can’t” Ronan answers, suddenly angry. At Adam or himself, Adam doesn’t know.

Adam can feel himself getting mad too and tries breathing for a few seconds before answering in order to control his feelings. He gets up from the couch and says “Fine, be an asshole. I’m going home, you know were to find me when you stop being an idiot.”

He turns around from Ronan and goes towards the door.

“What’s that?” Ronan is suddenly behind him and stops Adam grabbing him from the arm.

“What?”

“In your nape. You  have a giant bruise, what happened?”

Adam feels his blood leave him and isn’t able move. He tries not to look nervous and as if everything was fine and prays that Ronan doesn’t know him as well as he thought.

“I fell off from my bike.”

Ronan narrows his eyes at him. He knows Adam has just lied to him; he really does know him too well.

“Take it off,” Ronan demands “take your shirt off, now.”

“I’m not going to take my shirt off. I told you, I just fell off my bike. It looks worse than what it actually is.”

If Ronan had looked angry minutes before, now he looked furious. “Do you think I’m dumb or something? I know when you are lying to me, you get all squirmy and shit. Take your fucking shirt off, Adam. I’m serious.”

Adam crosses his arms and Ronan lifts an eyebrow, looking on the verge of murderous. He sighs and takes his shirt off; there is no point for him to try and argue with Ronan when he is like that, so he obliges. 

When Ronan sees the full bruise that covers all of his back he holds his breath and quickly forgets that he is angry at Adam.

“What did _really_ happen to you?” Ronan asks quietly “And don’t lie to me, please.”

It’s the quiet ‘please’ what does it for Adam, who is already barely holding it together and starts trembling slightly. Ronan hugs him and guides them towards the couch again.

“Shh… It’s okay. C’mon, talk to me.” Ronan tells him in a low voice.

Adam closes his eyes and breathes long and slow, taking his time before telling Ronan something that he knows will change things between them and their friendship. He wishes with all his being that Ronan doesn’t think any less of him when he hears what he has to tell him, but doubts anyone would be able to look at him the same way.

“It was my dad. He just beat me.”

And there it is, out. He had hoped to feel better once he told someone but the truth was still the same and it didn’t change anything.

“He _just_ beat you?” Ronan says, anger coloring his voice “He JUST beat you? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Adam closes his fists and gets up, putting space from him and Ronan.

“I shouldn’t have told you.”

“No,” Ronan says, and Adam feels his heart breaking a little “no, you should have told me _earlier._ How long has this been going on?”

Adam doesn’t answer and Ronan gets up and stands in from of him, looking angrily at his eyes while hissing “How long?”

“ _Sinceforever_ ” Adam says fast, as fast as the beating of his heart.

Ronan’s eyes open wide “Fucking asshole, I’m gonna kill him. I swear to God I’ll kill him.”

Adam stands there, silently watching Ronan pace back and forth around his living room and wishing for about the thousandth time in his life to disappear.

“Ronan, stop,” Adam pleads “just stop. You being angry is not going to help anyone.”

“Then I’ll call the police. Or you’ll call the police.”

“No,” Adam says. “No one is calling the police.”

“Then, what? You are going to let him hit you? Really?” Ronan couldn’t understand what Adam what’s telling him, he didn’t know anything about what Adam had to go through each day of his life and didn’t comprehend what talking to the police could mean to Adam and his already bruised body. He didn’t understand anything, no one did and no one would.

“Things like this happen because they have to. Maybe I deserve it,” Adam mumbles. 

“What?” Ronan exclaims “No. You do not fucking deserve to be beaten up by your shithead of a father. I can’t believe you would even think something like that.”

Adam shrugs sadly and stares at the floor. Ronan approaches him and takes his chin between his fingers, holding his head up and making him look at his eyes.

“Listen to me carefully,” Ronan tells him “you. do. not. deserve. it.”

Adam looks away, “Whatever.”

“No, Adam, I’m being serious. You are one of the best people I know, you are smart, nice, funny… Jeez, even when we were younger you were always  looking forward to converse with the old ladies at the park and help them feed the ducks at the pond.”

Adam laughs a little at this and Ronan gives him a little smile.

“Adam, you and me have been friends for so long and you know me the best. You know that I don’t lie so believe me when I tell you that you have’t done anything wrong and he hitting you is not, in any way, your fault. He is just an asshole. We’ll find the way to stop him and maybe it won’t be today, but  I promise you he’ll be stopped.”

 

* * *

 

Ronan’s dad dies when he’s sixteen. 

Ronan finds Niall’s dead body.

Ronan cries and gets angry at the world.

Ronan shaves his hair.

Adam is there for him.

 

* * *

 

While Adam goes to Henrietta’s public school, Ronan is enrolled in an all-boys  school called Aglionby Academy that only rich kids can attend, therefore the reason Adam can only dream about ever getting in.

Is at Aglionby where Ronan meets Richard Gansey and despite their differences they become really good friends and start spending most of their time together. Adam can’t help but feel a little jealous and as if he is being left behind, but he quickly feels guilty because he is judging Gansey and he doesn’t even know him yet.

One afternoon of early May, Ronan and Adam meet at Nino’s to have some pizza and talk about their week since they haven’t been able to talk to each other for several days.

“I swear, we would be able see each other more if you didn’t insist in spending all of your afternoons _and_ weekends studying or working,” Ronan says while eating and making Adam look disgusted at him “I don’t even get why you try so hard.”

Adam nows it’s time to tell Ronan what his plan has been all along “I want to get into Aglionby.” 

“What? Are you fucking with me?” Ronan says, clearly surprised “No offense, but you won’t be able to pay the tuition with your shitty jobs even if you kill yourself working.”

Adam sighs and looks at the table, “I _know_ , that’s why I am applying for a scholarship and in order to get it I need to get perfect grades this year thus the reason I spend all of my free time studying as much as I can, so don’t be an asshole.”

Ronan shrugs and smiles a little, “Well, I hope you can make it. It’d be great to have you there; maybe it’ll make Aglionby suck a little less.”

Adam smiles at him and they continue eating in comfortable silence until someone approaches their table.

“Ronan?”

Adam looks up and sees a handsome boy that looks about their age that is dressed in clothes that make him look older, like an old golf player.

Ronan smiles at the guy and he indicates him with his hand to sit at the free sit besides him. “Hey Dick, what’s up?

The boy rolls his eyes but smiles nevertheless “Not much, Lynch.” He turns to look at Adam and smiles at him politely “Hi, I’m Gansey.”

Adam tries not to look surprised but he’s taken aback, he didn’t spect Gansey to look like this -to be honest, he hadn’t really thought about how Gansey would look like, but he hadn’t expected Ronan to befriend someone who screamed _Aglionby_ so much. 

Adam shakes Gansey’s hand, “Adam Parrish.”

Gansey’s eyes open wide “Oh, so you are Ronan’s best friend. I imagined you quite, mmh… differently.”

_Well, that makes two of us_ -Adam thinks, trying not to feel bad at the implications of what Gansey has just said.

Gansey stays with them and they talk while they eat their pizzas, and even thought the conversation starts being quite uncomfortable for all three parts they quickly and easily start feeling as if they had always been together. Gansey asks Adam all kinds of questions, looking specially surprised and impressed when he finds out that Adam has several jobs, as if someone his age working was something he hadn’t ever heard of. Adam suspected he probably hadn’t.

They decided to meet at Nino’s again the following Saturday. And the next one…

 

* * *

 

Suddenly, it was not Adam-Ronan anymore. Now it was Adam-Ronan-Gansey.

Adam would have been angry at this, really, but he hadn’t it in him to hate Gansey even if he sometimes didn’t think about the repercussions of some of the things he said. In just a matter of days Gansey had become Adam and Ronan’s friend and without any of them noticing they were trapped in the arms of a Welsh king and his adventures.

Soon, Adam found himself spending more time at Monmouth Manufacturing -an old brick warehouse that Gansey had decided to make his place and where Ronan had agreed to move into- than at the trailer he had to call his house.

 

One evening, as Gansey is looking for information about Glendower and Ronan plays video games, Adam arrives soaking wet to Monmouth and makes both guys turn their attention to him.

“What the fuck happened to you, Parrish?” Ronan asks.

Adam narrows his eyes at him “It’s raining.”

Gansey takes his glasses off and looks at Adam, “If we had known you were coming one of us would have picked you up.”

“I know,” Adam says while taking his wet jacket off and hanging it in a chair “I just couldn’t wait any longer to tell you guys.”

“Tell us what?” Gansey says, getting closer to him and eyeing the letter that Adam is holding.

Adam grins, “I got in.” He says, waving the letter “I got into Aglionby. It wasn’t easy but they finally offered me a scholarship.”

Gansey’s eyes open and Ronan smiles so wide an entire galaxy could have fit inside of him.

“I knew you could do it Parrish, I fucking knew it” Ronan says, his voice colored with happiness. He approaches Adam and hugs him.

If Adam had felt happy before, now he was feeling as if he could touch the sky. He hugged Ronan back.

When Ronan lets go of him Adam can see red in his cheeks but says nothing because he can feel his face warm too. Gansey extends his arm and his and Adam’s fists collide.

“Let’s celebrate.” He says, smiling.

And so they do. 

They decide to go to Nino’s and as they’re waiting for their pizza Adam can’t help but notice the pretty waitress with the bad mood that kinda reminds him of Ronan. It’s not a surprise that even if he tries not being too obvious about staring at her that Gansey quickly catches him.

He follows Adam’s gaze and nods in understanding. “She’s pretty,” he says. “Dresses kind of outlandishly, but she’s pretty.”

Ronan snorts at this. “You’re one to talk, with your banana yellow polo shirt.”

Gansey just rolls his eyes at this and looks at Adam “You should talk to her, I’m sure if you ask her for a date she’ll say yes.”

Adam blushes, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I could go talk to her for you,” Gansey offers, and well that’s _definitely_ not a good idea. “Or Ronan could.”

When Ronan hears this he chokes on his drink and makes a strangled noise. “Theres’s no chance that that’s fucking happening, Dick.”

Adam looks at Ronan and thinks he looks extremely uncomfortable but says nothing. He might have been staring for far too long because when he turns to talk to Gansey he isn’t in his sit; Adam finds him near the restaurant’s kitchen talking to the waitress.

He makes a strangled noise and hides his head in his hands, “Great. Fucking great.” He can feel Ronan staring at him, “What?” He asks through gritted teeth.

“Nothing, Jesus.” Ronan says, “It’s just some chick, she’s not gonna eat your brain or anything. The worst thing that can happen is that she thinks you are some perv.” He says, smirking.

“Fuck you,” Adam tells him, but smiles at him.

Not long after that, they hear the girl shouting at Gansey and Adam, feeling very embarrassed, does his best to not start running in the direction of the parking lot.

 

At the end of the day he has somehow arranged a date with Blue, the pretty waitress.

 

* * *

 

Things between Adam and Blue don’t last very long.

Adam isn’t heartbroken, per se, but he can’t help but feel disappointed. He thinks that _maybe_ he might never get to know what love really is, that _maybe_ there’s no reason for him to miss something that he has never even had.

In the end, he is not at all surprised when he finds out about Gansey and Blue. He supposes that he should be, but they were meant to happen the same way he and Ronan were meant to find each other thanks to a toy car, kind of.

He should have been surprised, however, that the same toy car that united them when they were four makes them bond again, but in a totally different way, now that they are almost adults. Somehow, he isn’t. 

_So_ , he lets Ronan kiss him and lets himself kiss him back, lets all of the feelings he had been carrying inside of him flow between their mouths, and lets his hands print all over Ronan’s body the words he isn’t able to say but wants him to know about.

When they break apart, Ronan looks nervously at Adam, who can see that his cheeks are red, and says, “Would you like to-to-… mmh… want to go out with me?” Adam smiles and feels himself blushing, but he doesn’t dwell in that because he is more concerned about his furiously beating heart.

To be honest, Adam had suspected that Ronan was into him since they were younger, when he spent days angry at him after coming back from that camp he had gone to and he had told Adam that he had “realized something”. Adam, for his part, had been thinking about Ronan in _that_ way for a couple of months, even if he had had feelings for him for years; he had just been trying to repress them until he could be sure of what it was that he wanted.

Ronan, seeing as Adam is taking some time to answer quickly, says “Or not. I mean… Well, whatever”.

He is about to get up from his bed, where they have been kissing, so Adam quickly grabs his arm and stammers, “I-I would like that.”

“Really?” Ronan smiles incredibly big “Great, that’s, um, great. Yeah.”

Ronan being all flustered makes Adam smile and he can’t help but kiss Ronan again, and again, and again…

They may be eighteen, but it feels like they could kiss for a lifetime and never get tired of the other.

 

* * *

 

As it turns out, they somehow do get to live a lifetime together.

They grow up, together and apart, in the roads between Henrietta and Harvard, attending parents meetings, birthdays and weddings and being completely and utterly in love.

At the age of eighty-five, Adam dies in his and Ronan’s bed, in his husband’s arms, feeling content for everything they’ve accomplished together and being thankful for finally knowing what love is but also being able to love back.


End file.
